. >> reporter: to date, no tsa officer has been caught stealing more than pythias brown. he manned a luggage screening machine at newark and estimates he stole some $800,000 worth of items from passenger luggage in a four-year crime spree. >> i could tell whether it was cameras or laptops or portable cameras or whatever kind of electronic was in the bag. >> reporter: that's what you wanted? >> yeah. >> reporter: once you saw that -- >> i would alarm the bag. >> reporter: that gave you the justification to open it? >> yes. >> reporter: just out of prison, where he served three years, brown told abc news theft was easy. part of a culture of indifferences at tsa, whose officers are among the lowest paid employees of the federal government. you knew what you were doing was wrong? >> yes. >> reporter: but you did it anyway? >> yes. >> reporter: why did you do it? >> just playing in with the rest of them, of, i don't care and, they ain't treating us right and they're not paying us right. >> reporter: brown showed us the action he used at the airport where he says no one is chec